Editing Chewa language (section)

== Town Nyanja (Zambia) ==
{{Infobox language
|name=Town Nyanja
|states=Zambia
|region =[[Lusaka]]
|speakers=?
|date=
|ref=
|familycolor=Creole
|family=[[Nyanja language|Nyanja]]-based
|iso3=none
|glotto=none
|guthrie=none
}}

An urban variety of Nyanja, sometimes called Town Nyanja, is the lingua franca of the Zambian capital [[Lusaka]] and is widely spoken as a second language throughout Zambia. This is a distinctive Nyanja dialect with some features of [[Nsenga language|Nsenga]], although the language also incorporates large numbers of English-derived words, as well as showing influence from other Zambian languages such as [[Bemba language|Bemba]]. Town Nyanja has no official status, and the presence of large numbers of loanwords and colloquial expressions has given rise to the misconception that it is an unstructured mixture of languages or a form of slang.
[[File:WIKITONGUES- Chabota speaking Nyanja.webm|right|thumb|Zambian Town Nyanja.]]
The fact that the standard Nyanja used in schools differs dramatically from the variety actually spoken in Lusaka has been identified as a barrier to the acquisition of literacy among Zambian children.<ref>{{cite book|last=Williams|first=E|title=Investigating bilingual literacy: Evidence from Malawi and Zambia (Education Research Paper No. 24)|year=1998|publisher=Department for International Development}}</ref>

The concords in Town Nyanja differ from those in Chichewa described above. For example, classes 5 and 6 both have the concord ''ya-'' instead of ''la-'' and ''a-''; class 8 has ''va-'' instead of ''za-''; and 13 has ''twa-'' instead of ''ta-''.<ref>Gray, Lubasi, & Bwalya (2013), p. 11</ref> In addition, the subject and object marker for "I" is ''ni-'' rather than ''ndi-'', and that for "they" is ''βa-'' (spelled "ba-") rather than ''a-''.<ref>Gray, Lubasi & Bwalya (2013) p. 16.</ref>